Authors: Alessandra Trevisan | Solar Plex

Title: Envy lovers

The track starts from mixed texts, developed on an unplublished poem by A. Trevisan, which opens and closes the track. Verses dialogue with three literary sources: two are explicitely mentioned (Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath) and the third (Amelia Rosselli) remains as a watermark in the text, omitted by the authors.

The intention is to “represent” two metaphors, the mirror and the “double image” (by Sexton) which reveal themselves in the deadly sin of envy, showing a double meaning. The title explains it, in the meaning of “the ones who love envy”.

Voice and sounds follow the idea of a path in the composition, development of the voice and its amplification become sonic sources for other instruments, as loops and analog filters. Sounds become fundamental players in the perceptive process, transferring on multiple levels the possibility of listening to the track.

Author: ANIMAL PARTY

Title: In Sleep's Arms

My track 'In Sleep's Arms' was written, produced, and mastered in my bedroom in the spring of 2016. I was living in a basement apartment in a busy area of downtown Toronto. I was going through a period of extreme claustrophobia and anxiety, I felt like no matter what direction I went I was surrounded by thousands of people, dirty air and no green trees. I was trapped underneath all of this in my tiny little space. I wrote this track in response to dense feelings that were becoming like smog within my soul. 'In Sleep's Arms' refers to the only escape I could achieve at the time, when I closed my eyes to sleep. I would sleep away days and nights in order to block out the reality of the future utopia life I had landed myself into.

The track is made up of many different textures, achieved by experimenting with software synths. Improvisation both in playing and production techniques make up the final wash of sound that I cannot even begin to remember how I acheived. This song was created from a feeling, in a moment, for which I look back on and feel nostalgia for. Why is it we feel nostalgia even for the bad times? It is because of this I can get out of bed to make art, even if leaving the house can become too much.

Animal Party, started in Summer 2015, is the brainchild of Toronto based musician Sinéad Bermingham. Her music incorporates elements of electronic, rock, folk and pop music to create a dreamy, experimental dance sound. Recorded releases are accompanied by a more lively and vibrant live show, focusing more on the dance elements of her sound. Throughout her first year on the Toronto scene, she has played some of Toronto’s more notable venues, such as the Smiling Buddha and the Cameron House, hosting her own musical extravaganzas as well as part of many other colourful bills, supporting friends/heroes within the scene. She has collaborated and produced with some of Toronto’s best talent, including production work for Squiggly Lines recording with the gang from Plutoid records. With a winter tour in the works and about to get underway, Animal party is currently recording her debut LP, along with sketching out bigger plans for a cross country summer tour.

Author: Astronauta Pinguim

Title: Seven Deadly Synths

I've chosen 7 "deadly" synths to realize this piece, namely: Minimoog, Moog Sonic 6, Moog Source, Polymoog, Moog MG-1, Korg M-500, and Roland Jupiter 4. No compositional process here, I only turned on each synthesizer and improvised, track by track, to achieve the goal. A conceptual rule was applied: to break each of the 7 deadly sins during the process, for instance, using and naming the instruments (pride), sending the track closer to the deadline (sloth), et cetera.

Astronauta Pinguim (a.k.a. Fabricio Carvalho) is an electronic music composer and independent researcher on the early days of electronica. Born in the south of Brazil and currently living in São Paulo, Pinguim started his solo career in 2000, and released 4 CDs and one 7-inch single since then. Artists he collaborated with include Simeon Coxe III (Silver Apples), Herb Detusch, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. 

Author: BERTRAND ROSSA

Title: Akedia Youth's Arcadia

The sin is Sloth.

The piece is written slothfully by itself, automatically.

A robot or a computer program could have calculated the main structure, consequently the piece is an auto-generated score.

The foundation is "The day of rest" by the Venetian composer Philip Trajetta, who was born in 1777 and died at the age of 77.

Every 7 notes of the Overture, they were selected the notes forming a 7 voices cluster evolving according to the micro-polyphonic technique, slightly changing every 7 seconds. Every micro-variation is obtained by selecting the next note after every 7th one of the soprano and the bass lines (alternatively) of  "The day of rest" Overture.

When a note from the Overture repeats one of the previous 7, this is not included and it is selected the next 7th, and so on.

A micro-cycle generates the octaves where the notes are realized. Every octave is a register corresponding to a voice of the evolving cluster. The registers are the 7 ones obtained from every octave of a modern piano.

The first micro-cycle starts from the middle register-voice and goes to the 1st down then to the 6th up (7), then to the 2nd down and the 5th up (7), then  3+4 (7), then in itself (7), 6+1 (7), 5+2 (7), 4+3 (7). 

The second micro-cycle starts from the next upper octave and go firstly to the 2nd down and the 5th up (7), then 3+4 (7), and so on in a similar way, completing 7 cycles. 

To get a complete macro-cycle (the result of 7 micro-cycles) this piece should last exactly 11 minutes and 26 seconds, but now, I'm tired of talking.

Author: DEBRA PETROVITCH

Title: Cleaner

The track was created by using a pedal organ and sustaining the sonics over a 15 minute duration - it is a catharsis and also an abreaction (for personal reasons). A track was created in Reason which intertwines the organ sonics via a midi keyboard. The final result is a live mix of the two organs one analogue and the other digital.

Dr Debra Petrovitch is a practicing Australian artist and academic of national and international acclaim. She is interested in the psycho-sonic realm and its power to create a new form of theatre which is immersive and sometimes triggered by the audience. Body sounds and pulses are often used in relation to visuals - pushing the limits of performance and the abject.

Author: Gail Priest 

Title: Vice Virtue Versa (excerpt)

For every deadly vice there is a virtue. 

Those who are most evil often believe themselves to be virtuous.

And even the most virtuous are not without vices.

Vice and virtue are perceived as a binary system but rather they are intimately related, as are all extremes—points on a circle.

I was thinking about these things as I undertook this improvisation for processed voice and electronics (a Moog Mother 32). Metaphorically the voice may seem like virtue, and noise the vice, the corruption. But then again, the oversaturated voice here could be seen as a vain voice (Superbia), the noise as simple, humble, unadorned functionality (Humilitas).

In my practice I’m interested in the intersection of extremes—the zone where osmosis, the exchange of states, happens. I’m also trying to work more responsively, fluidly with technology, to allow more organic interaction and instinctual responses. This new approach is resulting in more raw compositions. I offer them more humbly perhaps, as I try to contain the pride involved in controlling things. And coincidentally it might just sound like a living hell to some… 

GAIL PRIEST is a Sydney-based artist with a multi-faceted practice in which sound is the key material of communication and investigation. Her work comprises solo electro-acoustic performance and recordings, sound installations for gallery contexts, sound design for performance and video, as well as curation, critique and advocacy. Using vocal improvisation, field recording and synthetic detritus her recorded and live music explores the interaction of the figurative and the abstract, the machinic and the organic, the sensual and the brutal.  http://www.gailpriest.net

Author: Isabel Nogueira

Title: When did they tell you that your gluttony is bad?

Composer- performer, researcher. PhD in Musicology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain (2001) and Bachelor of Piano at the Federal University of Pelotas, RS, Brasil (1993). Professor of the Arts Institute at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, teacher and supervisor of Graduate Courses, Master and Doctor of Music (UFRGS), and Master and Doctor of Social Memory and Cultural Heritage (UFPel / RS). Member of the Research Group in Sound Creation (UFRGS), Studies in Music and Media (Musimid / SP), Research Group in Performance Practices (UFRGS) and SARDS- Sonic Arts Research & Decolonial Studies (University of Costa Rica). Develops research projects in sound creation and music and gender. She has written books and papers about musicology, sound creation and music and gender, released the phonographic works Vestígios Violeta (2014), Lusque-fusque (2016 - with Medula); Voicing (2016) and Impermanente movimento (2016). She is part of Medula Collective of Sound Experiments and has the Strana Lektiri Duo with Leandra Lambert.

Author: JOHANN MERRICH

Title: A ritual Dance around the center

"The soft the supple step and sturdy pace,

that in the smallest of all circles turns,

moves like a dance of strength around a core

in which a mighty will is standing stunned".

Rainer Maria Rilke, The Panther.

Johann Merrich is an Italian electronic music composer (b. 1981) currently living in Venice. She's a passionate connoisseur of electronic music history and published in 2012 a book on women pioneers in this field. She is co-founder of electronicgirls.org, netlabel dedicated to the effort of women and young artists in electronics.Since 2013, she's curator of Live Arts Cultures musical efforts (workshops, residencies, performances). She writes graphical and verbal scores for electronic music orchestras, working for dance and theatre, operating in the field of Intuitive Music. Her works have been performed in France, Portugal, Italy, Bosnia and Croatia. She's now interested in raising public awareness on environmental issues by using electronic music. She deepened her knowledge following seminars lead by Teho Teardo, Pauline Oliveros, Markus Stockhausen.

Author: Paola Prinzivalli

Title: Sloth

In its modern sense, the sloth is seen as the melancholy of those who suffer the conditioning of doing things, who must always be creative, productive, deserving things. The running of the time become a self-hypnosis immerse into a see of inertia; the initiative is stuck into the creative idleness, into the dream-desire which cannot be materialized.

The track is built upon layers of voices, effects and a VST low frequency oscillator. 

The final sentence came from Henry Miller's "Black Spring".

Paola was born in Rome in 1970 and lives in the Marche since 2001. In 2003 she became mom.

From 1987 to 2000 she is singing in various rock bands of the Roman scene, writing their own songs. In the early nineties she worked as a singer and actress in some holiday parks.

In 2009 she starts her new musical project named Labile.

She collaborates with musicians around the world, lending her voice and her words even in English.

Since 2009, she's participating in events and poetry readings, she works as a lecturer at events and presentations.

From 2009 to 2014 she publishes stories and poems on the creative writing site leggendoscrivendo.it and in 2011 she joined the editorial staff.

From 2013 she is part of the Polyphonic Choir of the Musical Chapel of the Cathedral of Fano, in the soprano section.

In 2014, she participates in staging of "The women are really human beings?" For Lavanderia theater company as actress and collaborator to the texts.

From 2015 she collaborates with the theater company Teatro dei Bottoni - Gruppo Ascii32, as an author, actress, musician, sound technician, with which she made several shows.

She has published poems and stories in several anthologies and websites. SHe has received awards in several poetry competitions.

Author: PATRIZIA MATTIOLI 

Title: SLOTH

Author: Pirette Falkovich

Title: Greed

Choice and Methods

In my opinion envy and greed are probably the most poor feelings or traits of the 7 given and i

wanted to choose something that is at least somehow close to the word "sin". Which i

understand as something very bad and unreasonable, not necessarily connected to religion.

I tried to put myself into a state of mind i would call greedy and envious, improvised on the

piano and recorded it. This track was the basis for further piano tracks and electronics, which i

added to give the piece a somehow more monumental character, according to the topic "deadly

sins" which sounds very imposing to me. In the end I decided for “Greed” on a gut level to be

honest, but I think I can hear it in the music.

The piece consists of a few live recorded piano tracks, which I afterwards fed into a synthesizer

and sampler. The piano amplitude triggers the sampler that is playing pre-recorded drum tracks,

an oscillator for the bass and some modulation on the sampled drums.

Short Bio

I was born in Poland, moved to Germany a long time ago and I am living in Berlin since 13

years. I´m playing piano since the age of 7, studied sound engineering and working as a sound

designer. Recently i got a quite good piano borrowed from a friend and started to play more

again, that´s how Pirette Falkovich came into being. I am improvising on the piano, sometimes i

invite friends to listen, and I´m recording and editing it. This is the first time I´m trying to

publish a piece that is composed out of piano and electronic instruments

Author: SHE'S NOISY 

Title: Shanti sees space

Energy vortexes vibrate in tune with the 7 chakras, as opposed to the 7 capital sins.

Voices and sounds mix together to form a sort of an ascending electro-mantra in a singing rebirth of the soul. No sins, no guilt, only soothing peace in one’s mind, body and speech.

synth - voice - tibetan bell - chakra’s frequency

Author: THE MUSELEON

Title: The Inner Heart

My piece is based on a 17th Century plate (above) from the Tableau de Mission by Francois Marie Balanant. This is an allegorical image which depicts the Deadly Sins in their animal guises contained within the human heart. The piece consists of seven tracks each representing an animal: Gluttony (Pig), Pride (Peacock), Sloth (Snail), Envy (Snake), Wrath (Lion), Avarice (Toad) and Lust (Goat). Each sin is depicted sonically, either by actual field recordings of the animal sounds or created in the studio. All sounds have been edited, looped, and processed to change the overall dynamics and make them less obvious. Hence the Peacock drone that begins the piece, with changes in pitch and speed, sounds nothing like the original calling birds. 

Other “real” samples used are the goat bleating that underpins the track, the wailing lion, toads and frogs in a pond, and pigs in a shed. I created the snake track in the studio on synthesizers, as I wanted metallic hissing and spitting snake effects. To represent the snail, I used a sample of a snailhorn, often used in ritualistic ceremony, as a warning or call to war.  As in the original image, the animals or sins all combine to hopefully create a foreboding and dark atmosphere of The Inner Heart.

Track: TV Sloth 

Author: Vugly - Valentina Guidugli

Composed using collage technique, TV Sloth, is composed by samples and loops. The main answer is: could we face sloth as part of our cultural landscape? We know that terrible things happen everyday, every minute, we SEE them but hey appear so far from us, we do nothing or we can’t do anything. Like a a note sticky in our mind, terrible images just stand somewhere inside of our brain, aside of our lives...

Valentina Guidugli

I’m BassPlayer & Author. Singer (sometimes).

I’m completely in love with bass since I was twelve. I started my adventure with low ends some years later and it is still leading me to roads I would never imagined…

Today my main music projects are Vugly, solo bass&voice with electronics, Voci di donne, acting company where I take care of music and soundscape.

I’ve been bass player and author for SHIVADIVA (Mondo Perfetto.Ed. Oyez! on iTunes) from 2007 to 2013.

I love to play and collaborate with various artists and musicians, both live and studio.

Some project I’ve worked with: MUNI, Kayamama Reggae Evolution, Orchestra Giulio Rusconi, AGE (Augusto Gentili Ensemble).

Since 2013, I love teaching music and being a bass product specialist, too. www.valentinaguidugli.wordpress.com